Nederlands Dans Theater NDT2 Festival Theatre Edinburgh 6th May 2022 Review
NDT2 Nederlands Dans Theater is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh for two dates only, Friday 06 and Sat 07 May. By the time you read this review for the first date, you only have today left (Saturday) to try and get along to see three very different works that each have their own individuality, their own story to tell. For me, although these very different works were never intended to be told together (one is 20 years old), they all in some way are connected to far larger stories, love, loss and emotions that we all experience throughout our own lives. This is in the end what NDT is about, expressing life in all of its myriad complexities through the endlessly fluid language of dance.
To get under the “skin” of tonight’s three performances a little bit I think we have to go back to what NDT2 is as a dance company. NDT2 is a very specific artistic offshoot of the older and original Nederlands Dans Theater (ND1) based (as is also NDT2) is in Den Haag, Nederland. With NDT2, a creative remit to nurture and develop young talent has always been at the forefront of everything they do. Just as importantly the company is tapping into, and allowing to develop, that massive resource of energy, creativity and will to always be challenging everything around them whilst searching for the next new creative horizon that young dancers bring to every project that they touch. For these, and many other reasons, when NDT2 was being formed the audition range was ages 17 to 22.
Three very different works were performed this evening starting with the UK premiere of “The Big Crying” (world Premiere 18 March 2021), a very personal piece by Marco Goecke, created shortly after the death of his father. Despite this being a defining time in the life of one person, that grief, that sense of loss for a loved one is an emotion that we all experience at some time in our lives, and we can all so easily relate (perhaps in endlessly different ways) to Marco Goecke’s feelings of personal loss.
With the dancers appropriately garbed in funereal colours and music that included the very dark “Blood Roses” by Tori Amos, this work with amazing precision of timing from everyone on stage is playing with time and space constantly. Here we have at times very angular movements that remind me so much of that look of a speeded up, over-cranked silent movie. At other times, there are little spaces where time almost stands still, where you wonder where the next step/movement can be taken. All of us familiar with close and personal grief like this will know the strange tricks time can play on us in moments like this.
The last work, “Impasse” is another UK premier (World Premiere 28 Feb 2020) and here Johan Inger has created a work which at time echoes in places the loneliness of “The Big Cry”. In “Impasse” however that sense of loneliness, isolation and no clear direction in life has many different reasons for being there, including the need to conform to peer pressure in an increasingly connected and regulated society. A society now that leaves many people, particularly the young (and old) feeling isolated and alienated, as so much of life seems contracted into a small window of “life time” so regimented by expected behaviour and responses from others around them. It is more than appropriate here that this work in performed and interpreted, often in a very individual style, by the young dancers of NDT2.
Sandwiched in between both these works is “Simple Things” (2001), a beautifully expressive and stylish ballet for two pairs by one of the leading lights of contemporary dance over many decades, Hans Van Manen. With music that included Joseph Haydn piano trio Nr 28 in E major, this expressive work examining the relationships between both men and women in pairs firmly connects the classical ballet tradition of NDT with its approach to always pushing new creative boundaries with contemporary dance whilst drawing ongoing strength and inspiration from the disciplines of classical dance.
NDT is always at the edge of finding new ways to make dance both relevant and accessible to everyone and to this end, NDT is the first large dance company in the world to open its vast resource of archive material free to the public on the new online information resource base ”Google Arts & Culture”.
Review by Tom King (c) 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
https://tomkinguk.weebly.com/
To get under the “skin” of tonight’s three performances a little bit I think we have to go back to what NDT2 is as a dance company. NDT2 is a very specific artistic offshoot of the older and original Nederlands Dans Theater (ND1) based (as is also NDT2) is in Den Haag, Nederland. With NDT2, a creative remit to nurture and develop young talent has always been at the forefront of everything they do. Just as importantly the company is tapping into, and allowing to develop, that massive resource of energy, creativity and will to always be challenging everything around them whilst searching for the next new creative horizon that young dancers bring to every project that they touch. For these, and many other reasons, when NDT2 was being formed the audition range was ages 17 to 22.
Three very different works were performed this evening starting with the UK premiere of “The Big Crying” (world Premiere 18 March 2021), a very personal piece by Marco Goecke, created shortly after the death of his father. Despite this being a defining time in the life of one person, that grief, that sense of loss for a loved one is an emotion that we all experience at some time in our lives, and we can all so easily relate (perhaps in endlessly different ways) to Marco Goecke’s feelings of personal loss.
With the dancers appropriately garbed in funereal colours and music that included the very dark “Blood Roses” by Tori Amos, this work with amazing precision of timing from everyone on stage is playing with time and space constantly. Here we have at times very angular movements that remind me so much of that look of a speeded up, over-cranked silent movie. At other times, there are little spaces where time almost stands still, where you wonder where the next step/movement can be taken. All of us familiar with close and personal grief like this will know the strange tricks time can play on us in moments like this.
The last work, “Impasse” is another UK premier (World Premiere 28 Feb 2020) and here Johan Inger has created a work which at time echoes in places the loneliness of “The Big Cry”. In “Impasse” however that sense of loneliness, isolation and no clear direction in life has many different reasons for being there, including the need to conform to peer pressure in an increasingly connected and regulated society. A society now that leaves many people, particularly the young (and old) feeling isolated and alienated, as so much of life seems contracted into a small window of “life time” so regimented by expected behaviour and responses from others around them. It is more than appropriate here that this work in performed and interpreted, often in a very individual style, by the young dancers of NDT2.
Sandwiched in between both these works is “Simple Things” (2001), a beautifully expressive and stylish ballet for two pairs by one of the leading lights of contemporary dance over many decades, Hans Van Manen. With music that included Joseph Haydn piano trio Nr 28 in E major, this expressive work examining the relationships between both men and women in pairs firmly connects the classical ballet tradition of NDT with its approach to always pushing new creative boundaries with contemporary dance whilst drawing ongoing strength and inspiration from the disciplines of classical dance.
NDT is always at the edge of finding new ways to make dance both relevant and accessible to everyone and to this end, NDT is the first large dance company in the world to open its vast resource of archive material free to the public on the new online information resource base ”Google Arts & Culture”.
Review by Tom King (c) 2022
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
https://tomkinguk.weebly.com/
Please note that unless requested by performers/pr/venues that this website no longer uses the "star rating" system on reviews.